Offrande au bien-aimé

Well! What a find!

Made in war-time Germany in 1944, The Great Sacrifice (Opfergang) is not a film I'd even heard of this morning. I happened across a reference to it in a Berliners' personal diary from January 1945. A teenager 18, she was enchanted by the movie. When we watch today we should try to remember the impact this film had on her in that cinema in war-torn Berlin in 1945.

First of all - I do not agree with some of the convoluted reviews here. They have not been able to get past the thought that the director (Veit Harlan) made some hideous Nazi propaganda shockers. Opfergang is NOT one of those. Another reviewer seems to think this is not an "escapist" film. It ABSOLUTELY is!!!

So - let's look at Opfergang. First, I saw a restored 4K version on YouTube. The wonderful Agfacolour is MAGNIFICENT and the photography superb. Worth seeing just for those two aspects. It repays multiple watches.

Opfergang is a unique film - intriguing & beguiling, a film of contrasts, but nevertheless one which creates its own language: a language of imagery and metaphors.

There is something fairy-tale and dream-like about the way this thing looks and works. The masquerade ball scene is visually stunning - pure escapism, as is the frolicking with the beautiful horses. The end scenes are enigmatic. Unfortunately, it's not cut that well and it's a bit hard to follow the story, such as it is.

It contains bleak Nietzsche poetry, which is kind of played out in the story. There is a lot of "alluded to" darkness here - but it is uplifted, deliberately uplifted by the colour and camera work, which looks sumptuous.

The story is a tedious tale, something to do with honour & sacrifice. Something to do with how a woman, Octavia (von Mayendorff) makes a "sacrifice" for her husband, Albrecht (Raddatz). It's hard if not impossible to see this though, as we are drawn instead to Äls (Söderbaum) who is the physical & spiritual representation of everything that Octavia is not. Albrecht is drawn to her too. Irresistibly so. We all would be.

Having watched Opfergang several times I now believe that Äls is a sort of elemental force - a Sprite - a force of nature. She's not real. She has a zest for life throughout with a Pixie/Elf-like quality, like the innocent in all of us. I'd want to be her - not one of the other boring creations! However, I'm no longer sure if Äls is real. I wonder if she is a creation of Albrecht, or Octavia, or both of them - the embodiment of everything that is missing from their cold unloving marriage?

Opfergang is essentially a sort of bizarre love triangle: a very odd & metaphysical one. Personally - I didn't get the "sacrifice" - it doesn't make sense: probably part of the honour thing - lost through today's eyes, but it might mean something through the eyes of a young impressionable German in 1944/early 1945.

So, Opfergang. A film about a perfect non-wartime world (which, for propaganda purposes shows Hamburg completely undamaged, even though it was destroyed by air-raids in 1943...). Filled with handsome looking well-off people and old farts moralising and reading Nietzsche. Where idealised characters sail, row, ride horses in the surf and play Chopin on a superb grand piano. It's PURE ESCAPISM - a beautiful film to watch as you wait for the next air raid to come and destroy your city and family. If this is some propaganda call to the people of Germany to make a great sacrifice - then it's a very odd vehicle for it.

The more I watch Opfergang - the more tempted I am to give it 8. Watch it on YouTube and see what you think.

This is a film of incredible beauty, without doubt one of the most dramatic and moving pictures ever made. The wonderful Agfacolor-photography is astonishing, the main figures Äls, Albrecht and Octavia are played marvellous by Söderbaum, Raddatz and von Meyendorff. Director Veit Harlan once again surpasses himself!

A truly wonderful piece of film-making. One might try to ridicule it as a Nazi propaganda vehicle, but the truth is, this film is much too good to really suffer for these accusations. Yes, there is the presence of the Nazi principle of sacrifice, and things like "Kraft durch Freude" (strength through joy) are said, but this really doesn't matter. The atmosphere, the colours, the camera-work - everything is top notch. The actors, too: Kristina Söderbaum, the wife of Harlan and a star in his every film, proves for once that she really could act. Even though she seems very plump in this film, it can be understood why she was considered one of the best European actresses of the period. Her acting here is much better than anywhere else, even though on the over-dramatic side as always. Carl Raddatz was never a handsome leading man, so God only knows why Harlan paired him with Kristina so often. He was a decent actor, though. The Estonian-born Irene von Meyendorff is a woman from another planet and perfect in the role of Octavia, plus an amazingly beautiful woman. About the plot: Albrecht and Octavia live in their vanishing, shadowy world of German nobility, in a gloomy mansion where the blinds are always drawn. To a neighbouring villa a voluptuous Swedish amazon moves, and Albrecht is blinded by her sensuous and sometimes almost vulgar appearance. Even though Äls looks like a proper stake-and-kidney-pie, she is nevertheless marked for death. Now, the question is: who should sacrifice himself/herself for who? A lot of beautiful locations, beautiful gowns and a great masked ball scene.

Everything in the films is over the top. The atmosphere is morbid, the colours seem unreal, the people are extremely rich, work are doing the others, costumes and set are perfect. Kristina Söderbaum is perhaps not the perfect cast for one of the leading roles, but her acting is fine. All elements combined add up to an incredible, sort of surrealistic work, set in a time and in an era that never existed. In another place and in another time, it would be very easy to rate this film as masterpiece. But the directors morals are questionable as we know from his other films. It is disturbing to see this perfect world. Knowing that while the film was made at a time when millions died a horrible death. The film comes over as the sound track and moving picture gallery to the death of the Third Reich..

Of the thirteen hundred or so films produced during the Third Reich a small percentage were overtly propogandist but because of the perfectly understandable revulsion towards the Nazi regime, even the films which were designed to provide escapist entertainment for German audiences have been tarred with the same brush. They might now be considered in the historical sense but their aesthetic qualities have been overlooked.

Such is the case with demonised director Veidt Harlan who will forever be associated with the notorious 'Jud Suss' whilst his intensely lyrical films in colour are destined to be appreciated by a few cinéphiles.

The release of 'Opfergang' which Harlan and Alfred Braun adapted from the novella by George Binding, was delayed by a couple of years owing to the shortage of colour film stock by which time its themes of sacrifice and death could not fail to strike a chord with audiences.

Bruno Mondi is again behind the camera and the Agfacolor is stunning although somewhat faded. It is sorely in need of restoration but that is high unlikely. The script is literate and intelligent and Hans-Otto Borgmann again provides a sumptuous score.

The three leading players in this Cocteauesque romance are all out of the top draw. The far from traditional leading man is the excellent Carl Raddatz whilst the two women in his life are played by Harlan's wife Kristina Soederbaum, an artiste of extreme sensibility who never fails to tug at the heartstrings and the aristocratic, archetypal Aryan Irene von Meyendorff who had the distinction of being number one pin-up for the German army. Each of these characters in their own way makes the 'sacrifice' of the title. Some might interpret the feelings of Octavia for Als as being somewhat Sapphic but that is down to the individual viewer.

One astute critic has suggested that the scene featuring the 'available' females wearing masks might have influenced Stanley Kubrick when making 'Eyes wide shut', Sounds plausible to me especially as Kubrick was married to Harlan's niece!

As well as 'Opfergang', two other gems by this director from the early forties are 'Die Goldene Stadt' and 'Immensee' which together with Helmut Kautner's masterpiece 'Romanze in Moll' from 1943, should be all the more appreciated and revered for having emerged from such terrible times.